


I'm trying hard to hide your soul / from things it's not meant to see

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Grief, Mourning, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 23:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19386535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: Robb wakes, voiceless and heartsick, in the Twins.Away in White Harbour, his hidden bride has no time to tend her hurts - not with a babe to tend.Robb, Wylla, and the weight of heartbreak.





	I'm trying hard to hide your soul / from things it's not meant to see

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theMightyPen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theMightyPen/gifts).



> Don't ask me broader worldbuilding questions because this is very, very self-and-L-indulgent.

Robb wakes.

He touches his fingers to his throat - cut, but sewn - and then to his chest - bandaged, but whole.

This done, he weeps. 

 

* * *

Wylla is kept hidden when the Freys come.

The realm thinks her dead at Theon’s hand, and she very nearly was - only kind Barth’s cautious mind spared her, sending her away with as much supplies as her two guards could carry. He wrapped her in so many furs she had to be lifted onto her horse, and had it not been for him, for Winterfell’s loyalty to the Starks, to Bran and Rickon’s bravery, Wylla would not be here.

Branwen would not be here.

 

* * *

Smalljon, Dacey, Robin, Owen, Lucas,  _ Wendel- _

He cannot think of his mother. He doesn’t dare. 

Beyond his mother-

 

* * *

The Freys coming confirms what Wylla has been told, based on the rumours that have spilled forth from the Twins. No one mentions Robb’s name, no word is spoken of the crown or the armies, but she knows. She has heard enough.

Nineteen and a widow. Branwen not even born when she lost her father. 

 

* * *

There are so many dead. Too many. This is all he gleans from his captors. 

He only sees a handful - maester, nurse, the few girls desperate enough to think they might tempt even this fallen ruin he has become.

Nothing tempts him. Not food, not flesh, nothing. 

Well, save vengeance.

 

* * *

Branwen is a sturdy babe. Wylla’s lady mother says that she is a Manderly, save for the red of her cap of curls. Wylla says that she is a Stark, no matter how much of herself she can already see in her daughter.

Grandfather dotes on Branwen already, and it makes Wylla feel ill. Would her lord father, who has always so fiercely defended Wynafryd’s rights as his heir, dandle Wylla’s little daughter on his knee? Would Robb’s father, who was always so gentle and steady with his own children, have rocked his first grandchild to sleep?

Would Robb-

She cannot think of Robb. It hurts too much.

 

* * *

Edmure and his wife are kept away, as are her brothers, but her goodsister is not watched quite so closely.

“This posset,” Jyanna Frey says, one cousin among hundreds, married back into the family simply because some of them have no choice, “will taste like a horse’s arse, but it will speed along your healing.”

It does indeed taste like refined piss, but he feels stronger for it. Still no voice, but he manages to ask-

“Your lady mother is here as well,” Jyanna Frey assures him. “She’s in a worse state than you - I’ll try and see her, see if I can’t push her along with news of  _ your _ survival.”

 

* * *

“I know you hate to do it,” Wynafryd says, washing away another shade of green with vinegar and lemon juice, until Wylla’s hair is almost as fair as the snows outside. “But it’s safer, Wylls - think of Branwen.”

Wylla must think of all of them, for the little babe still giving suck at her breast is Queen in the North, the last Stark above the Neck and the last free Stark in Westeros. Wylla’s little babe cannot think as a queen must, and so it falls to Wylla.

She washes the green from her hair and sets aside the fine pearl necklace Robb gave her on their wedding day, the necklace she has not taken off since. Once all the Freys are dead - then she will take it from the depths of her mother’s jewel casket, and she will dye her hair defiantly green again, and she will give her daughter her true name.

But for now, Branwen must be kept safe so the North might have a future. 

  
  


* * *

If his mother, kept in the same castle, thinks that he’s dead, then so must everyone else.

He wishes he were. He wishes to his far-away gods in the weirwoods and he prays to the absent Seven that he were dead. At least if he were dead, they might have released his mother instead of making her suffer.

If he were dead, he might see Wylla, in whatever lies beyond.

Would the babe be there? Do babes see the beyond?

 

* * *

“We will bring your father home, sweetling,” Grandfather explains, “and once he at least is returned to us - then we might act.”

Branwen wails, caught against Wylla’s chest in her sling, and Wylla feels like joining her.

“Your young man loved you, my girl,” Grandfather says gently, touching her hand. “And knowing that might make the hurt worse, or it might make the healing easier - I cannot tell. But at least you know it for sure.”

She does not cry for fear of upsetting Branwen further, but it is a near thing.

 

* * *

Robb does not see Jyanna Frey again. He sees the maester, and he sees the guards outside his door, and he sees the timid girl who brings the thin broth that is all he can swallow.

Maester Brenett is not loyal to the Freys, if only because he is not a Frey himself. He is the one who tells Robb that he is yet breathing only because they failed to cut his throat properly and found him alive after leaving him for dead.

They are deciding what to do with him, he’s told.

His lady mother they’ve kept for a wholly different reason - she, too, was meant to be killed, but they decided she would be of more use in binding Edmure tighter to their grasp, and they intend on marrying her off to whoever Tywin Lannister chooses once she’s healed enough to be bedded.

Robb still cannot speak, but whatever look comes over his face asks question enough that Brenett rushes to assure him that no, his lady mother has not been raped or harmed in any such way. No, no, she is being kept much as he is, although they are doing more to speed along her healing.

Robb can linger as long as he pleases, for Late Lord Walder has not yet decided his fate.

 

* * *

She hears wolves howling in the night, sometimes. 

Not often - they do not usually venture so close to the coast. She was so unused to them that Robb had teased her for the way she startled awake to every call, her first few nights at Winterfell.

They are a comfort now. If the wolves still howl, some fool part of her thinks that perhaps the North is not as lost to the Starks as these Freys and Boltons would like to think.

Sometimes, as if she understands, Branwen howls back at the wolves, a high little  _ hoo _ loosed into the night that no one but Wylla and the gods will ever hear.

 

* * *

Robb can walk. He can sit up during the day, and he can eat stew now, if he’s careful to mash it all down. 

If he could trust that it would reach them unmolested, he might write a letter to his goodmother and goodsister, so that he would not be quite so alone in his grief. He thinks - he hopes - that since no one has gloated about Ser Wylis’ death, his goodfather is somewhere within the Twins yet, but Robb does not know how he is to face him. Robb’s war has cost Wylis Manderly not only his daughter but also his brother, too, and there is no way Robb can ever right that wrong.

His chest aches to think of Wylla, and he tries not to. It is impossible, though, the guilt of grieving her more than his brothers, his father, likely his sisters too - that chokes him as much as the stitches on his neck.

 

* * *

* * *

 

Branwen walks before she speaks, and hoots and howls her pleasure at being able to toddle from bedside to window and window to hearth.

She’s howling when Wynafryd comes in, pale and pinched from having to sit with her Frey betrothed, and Wylla wishes Branwen’s little games could bring a smile as easily to Wyn’s face as they do to her own. 

“Papa,” Wynafryd says, “has been sighted.”

Papa home and Stannis Baratheon’s Ser Onion gone to hunt out little Rickon-

Could this be it? Could the end be on its way?

“I want to watch,” Wylla says. “I’ve stayed away from them, from all of this, for fear of their finding Branwen. But I want to watch, Wynafryd. I would see their pain, as they have celebrated ours.”

“And if they recognise you?”

“How?” Wylla demands, gathering Branwen up when her howls turn to sulky hoots at being ignored. “Robb’s Queen is dead, and she had green hair besides - everyone knows that. And no doubt they think of a queen as some great beauty, like, like Naerys of old. Not a plump girl with too many freckles.”

Robb always told her there was no woman more beautiful in the world, and meant it. It never mattered what others thought of her looks, because he loved them - and her.

 

* * *

Robb is not told of his mother’s departure until she is gone.

In fact, Robb is not told of his mother’s departure until the Greatjon smashes the door of his sickroom with a great mace. He has been told nothing of anything for many days, it seems, because when Jon Umber comes through that door, he is covered in blood and wild with battle.

“Here we are!” the Greatjon roars. “Spread the word - the King is found!  _ The King lives! _ ”

Distantly, Robb hears the cry go up -  _ King in the North! Winterfell! Stark! _ \- but he can hardly hear it over the thud of his own heart.

“Well, sire?” the Greatjon says, swinging back to knock a guardsman in the head as if batting away a fly. “We found you only because a shy maid couldn’t hold her tongue about the poor red lord. Naught to say to your rescuers?”

 

* * *

There is a pie. There are pies galore, but there is  _ a pie. _

Wylla asks no questions. She would rather hear no truths this time.

 

* * *

“Can you sit a horse, Your Grace?”

The Greatjon has been more gentle with him than Robb might have expected. Mother gone, wolf dead, wife-

Robb will have to take a bride again, he knows. Every girl who  _ somehow _ slipped past his guards, every pretty little Frey daughter who sought his bed, would have been his next queen had he not turned them away. He still does not know what the late Late Walder had planned, but whatever it was, he wanted a marriage bond to hold him close.

No matter that, now. The Freys are scattered, and the Twins burning. Robb must sit a horse, and must somehow rally his people without saying a word.

His mother, apparently, has spoken only two words since the Red Wedding. These were at her own wedding, when her new bridegroom sought to bed her.

She spoke his name, and she slit his throat. 

Robb feels as though he is grieving his mother already, no matter that she is still alive.

 

* * *

 

“I say we swear to Lord Stannis, then,” Wylla says, clutching Papa’s arm because she can still hardly believe that he is truly here. “I say we swear our loyalty to the man who would bring the Boltons low, and restore the Starks to Winterfell.”

Wynafryd comes in, pink in the face and frantic looking, with a missive in her hand.

“They killed Lord Eddard,” Wylla says, thinking of the kind solemnity of her murdered goodfather, “and Lady Catelyn,” with her beautiful hands and her sweetness and brave, brave heart, “and they killed  _ my Robb-” _

She can say no more, and no one else says a word. Rickon, wild-eyed and hanging onto his wildling woman, is watching her closely. 

“They killed my Robb,” she says, quiet now, “and if Stannis Baratheon will give us vengeance, or justice, or whatever he wants to call it, then I say we swear to him.”

“Read this, Wylls,” Wynafryd says. “And you, Papa, read it - please.”

She presses the missive into Wylla’s hands, and steps away.

Wylla reads.

And then she cannot breathe.

 

* * *

“From White Harbour, Your Grace,” Pat Mallister says. The Riverlands must be scoured if they are to free enough of an army to take back the North, and Silverhill must be taken if they are to save Robb’s mother - or what remains of her, at least. “Anything else, my lord?”

He shakes his head. Still no speech, no matter what tonics and tinctures all the various maesters have pressed upon him, but the Greatjon is not shy about lending him his voice.

The Manderly seal pierces him to the core, an ache worse than any other yet - he and Wylla exchanged letters during their courting, and saved one another’s seals. Neither had ever mentioned it until after their wedding, and Wylla has laughed so to see Robb’s little box of green-blue mermaids. No doubt Theon melted the wax down for spite, but Robb and Wylla both had held those seals as a sign of the gods’ hands in their good match, their  _ loving  _ match.

He’ll be sick if he lingers much longer on it, and so he slips his finger under the seal - cannot bring himself to break it - and unfolds the letter to reveal a familiar, beloved hand. 

But-

It cannot-

_ How?! _

 

* * *

Rickon looks very like Robb, but there is something of Sansa in his haughtiness. The wildness is learned, and will be unlearned, but the cold way he turns up his nose at the slightest inconvenience, even at just eight years old, reminds Wylla entirely of his eldest sister.

He is warm with Branwen, though, kissing her round cheeks and holding her fat, pink hands as she toddles around the keep - free, now, to be hailed as her father’s daughter, to pull on Wylla’s pearl necklace and tug the ends of Wylla’s green braids. Rickon smiles only with his niece, laughs only with his brother’s daughter, and sometimes, Wylla thinks that he, too, howls at the moon.

It is good that Branwen gets used to being so coddled, though. Wylla can only imagine how sweet it will be to see her daughter in Robb’s arms.

 

* * *

His mother, when they take Silverhill, is nowhere to be found.

“She fled,” the guards tell him. “She was taken,” others say.

“The Stranger has made her his bride,” says another, and despite himself, it is this one that Robb believes.

 

* * *

“Your Grace?” someone calls, and Wylla looks away from the window. Branwen is hammering away at an armchair with the toy sword Rickon gave her while Wylla was with her father the day before, shouting cheerfully and amusing herself. She’s such a bright, independent child, and Wylla does worry a little how she will react to having brothers and sisters.

Because she will have brothers and sisters, because Robb is alive. Wylla still cannot quite believe it, but that is why the boy at the door is calling her  _ Your Grace,  _ and why Branwen has started answering to  _ Your Highness. _

The boy has a letter - with Robb’s seal, to be added to the hidden compartment in Wylla’s jewel case - and he bows as he passes it to her. He bows as well to Branwen, who waves her pink hand and her wooden sword with equal enthusiasm in response. 

“Come here, my darling,” she calls, and mercifully Branwen abandons her little sword before throwing herself toward Wylla’s waiting embrace. “Let’s read Papa’s letter together, shall we? Should we send for Uncle Rickon as well, little love?”

Branwen blows a raspberry, and Wylla tucks the letter into her pocket so she can dig out her handkerchief. Rickon is probably lingering outside her door, so she calls out to him, just in case.

“Give me the baby,” he says, holding out his hands expectantly. Wylla is reluctant to pass Branwen to most people, because she’s such an active, wriggly little thing, but for Rickon she’s always sweet as a lamb. “You have a letter, sister?”

“I do, little brother,” Wylla says. “Would you like to hear what Robb has to say?”

Wylla is unsure how well Rickon remembers his brothers and sisters, save Bran, so she tries her best to talk with him about Robb and the girls. She never knew her goodsisters as well as she might have liked, spending more of her time with Lady Catelyn and Master Poole than with their septa, but she does what she can, and shares what stories she has.

Her best weapon is to read Robb’s letters. He always sends two, one with news and the other just for Wylla, and so she sets that aside and shakes out the news for sharing.

“Is he coming home?” 

“Let’s see,” Wylla says, “let’s see what he has to say.”

 

* * *

The Greatjon offers to search for his mother, and Robb considers it seriously and at length. All that he has heard of his mother makes him reluctant to trust anyone with her care, but of all men he can surely trust Lord Umber. 

“I think,” the Greatjon says, unusually gentle, the voice he generally reserves for speaking of Wylla and the babe, “that she’d be best served by someone she knows, sire.”

There has been rumour of his mother and a gang of outlaws, of murders and hangings, and he hasn’t wanted to believe them. Proof was offered, though, by a trustworthy witness - Harwin, of all men! Harwin of Winterfell! - and so Robb has no choice but to accept that his lady mother has lost her mind.

Perhaps the Greatjon can help her find it. 

Loathe though Robb is to lose his fiercest general, he cannot deny that his mother’s sanity is a good cause - and so he nods. He will be in the North again soon, and even if he cannot speak, cannot ride into battle, his people will not deny him above the Neck.

Wylla would never allow it.

He nods. The Greatjon bows, and prepares to take his leave.

 

* * *

“Rickon, please my darling, please calm down-”

“He’s  _ late _ ,” Rickon growls, Shaggydog shifting and snarling around him. Branwen seems to have picked up on her uncle’s distress, crooning miserably against the crook of Wylla’s neck, and Wylla feels like joining her in her misery - why  _ is _ Robb late? Has something happened to him?

Has this all been a farce orchestrated by the Lannisters to draw her and Branwen and Rickon out?

The cry goes up just as her throat grows tight -  _ the King! The King! _ \- and Rickon bounds away with a great whoop of joy, Shaggy on his heels.

Wylla, with a suddenly less miserable Branwen bouncing on her hip, follows at a more sedate pace.

Her legs are too weak for anything more.

Robb is stiff as he dismounts, cradling his left arm against his chest as though it pains him and bundled up in more furs than she’s ever seen him wear. He’s flushed, though, ruddy and healthy and  _ alive _ looking, which is more than she could have possibly hoped for. More than she dared to pray for.

He smiles to see her. She cannot stop her tears.

 

* * *

The babe clinging to Wylla has curly red hair, true, but her plump pink cheeks and her sunny blue eyes are all Manderly.

Robb wishes he could cry out in greeting, wishes he could say Wylla’s name, that he could greet his daughter with something other than smiles and kisses and tears, but he must settle for silence until Wylla stops him with her fingertips to his throat.

“Oh, my darling,” she sighs, gently untucking the scarf he’s kept folded neatly around his neck, to hide the scarring. “What did they do to you?”

She leans up and kisses the terrible mark that should have killed him, that was meant as the first salvo in beheading him, and then she looks him firm in the eye. 

“Why did you not tell me?” she asks. “Did you think me some silly southron girl who would turn you away because you have no more sweet words for me?”

He leans his brow down against hers, because no, never, there is no woman in Westeros who is her equal, and he wishes he might tell her that.

 

* * *

“What of it if he does not speak?” Wylla asks, mild as milk and twice as sour. “He can write, can he not? And you can read?”

“Be that as it may, Your Grace,” someone down the table murmurs, and she stops them with a raised hand. Robb’s clever mind and fierce heart were not taken by the Boltons and the Freys, and he will not need them to arrange an alliance with Stannis Baratheon or to retake Winterfell.

Rickon and Shaggydog are lingering behind Robb’s chair, and they growl. Wylla is not sure which of them is the more frightening.

“If His Grace the King cannot speak,” Wylla says. “Then he may use my voice. And if he cannot wield his sword, why, then, my lords, should he not use yours?”

 

* * *

Branwen is tucked warm and small between them when the tears begin, suddenly and terribly.

“Please don’t weep,” Wylla begs of him, moving Branwen to the little bed in the corner of her chamber and returning to take Robb into her arms. “Please, Robb, I can hardly bear it.”

He cannot stop, now that he is begun, and it is mostly relief anyway. He had not been able to grieve her, his lovely wife, when her father brought him news of her death. He had not had time to weep over this loss, his but not shared with his mother, not the same as her father’s, and had had to be strong in face of all the kindly meant sympathies shared for the loss of the babe Wylla had been carrying, by men and women who always forgot to sympathise over Wylla herself.

But now they are here. His beautiful wife, the perfect child he never thought to have, they are both here, and he hardly knows what to do with them. He had worried on the way through the Riverlands, sailing across the Bite, that he would no longer know how to be a husband, or that he would be a terrible father.

Thanks to the gods or luck or Wylla’s smiling presence earning her the friendship of the household at Winterfell, he has a chance to remember, and to learn. If that is not worth crying over - what is?


End file.
